Hi guys, I was gifted a free iMac (Intel core 2 duo) from a retired nasa engineer in his 90s (he even worked on the atom bomb!) and I was wondering if it is worth anything or if I should keep it and try to put Linux on it.
He forgot the password and I had to do some things in the terminal to get around it. So far, everything looks to be in working order. I have never owned a Mac or Apple products in general so I am kinda out of my element here lol
They can, but most mainstream distros started dropping support for them a few years ago so software support is getting pretty rough.
Honestly I’d just keep it on Mac OS and explore old Mac OS and its quirks. If you downgrade to 10.4 you can run classic Mac OS games/software in addition to osx software. Mac OS has no drm so just burn a disk and boot off it. 10.4 only needs a single layer dvd, 10.5 needs a dual layer. If it’s an early G5 then any 10.4 installer will work, if it’s one of the last then you’ll need the machine specific restore dvd. You can find all the software you can dream of on Macintosh garden.
USB boot is possible but a little finicky. If you’re going to try Linux use a DVD. Linux is “supported” but it’s not worth the pain of the quirks of USB boot and the quirks of Linux on Mac.
Oh that’s not a G5 that’s an Intel iMac. Yeah Linux will boot just fine on that machine USB or dvd. I’d still play with old Mac OS on it since as soon as you put modern Linux on it becomes just a boring PC that can’t run much to me.
One time I was trying to get video off of one of those mini DV tapes and the only way I managed to do it was through an old Mac, which was able to export it as a video that modern FFMPEG can handle.
Agreed! Keep it as is , as much as I hate it, that thing is “retro” to the kids now.
Oh wow nice, I was just about to ask if it could run any games! Thank you so much. I am loving exploring old OS’s. I think I’m going to keep it on MacOS. I was messing around with GarageBand and that was pretty fun.
The only issue is I think my “password workaround” may have messed up some things. Notice how in my screenshot that some of my icons like Safari are missing? They don’t launch either. I should probably add what I actually did to get around the password from a YT guide:
The old owners files are all still there despite me making a new account. I don’t think my workaround method did an actual factory reset, rather it just deleted the apple setup file and tricks it into thinking it’s a new install. I’m planning on copying all the old owners personal files to a flash drive and returning it to him before I try to install anything.
I don’t see why that would have broken anything. I’ve never done that before. I’m pretty sure on that old version of Mac OS you could’ve just run resetpassword in terminal to have reset it. But maybe that’s only on the dvd.
Well as long as disk utility works find an iso of whatever Mac OS you want to run and burn that to a USB drive. 10.6 is my favorite since it still has Rosetta to run old PPC OSX software, has the old look, but has the best software support.